Not to be confused with MGM's 1935 "Mark of the Vampire" (the one with Bela Lugosi), nor a second film from the same year boasting the same title: "El Vampiro," the picture that kicked off Mexico's love affair with Universal Gothic. "The Vampire" was a rare instance of a supernatural monster reconfigured for the 50s science fiction craze, only a few months after Columbia pulled off "The Werewolf," a creature born from a laboratory that could change from man into beast any time of day or night. Acting honors go to John Beal as small town doctor Paul Beecher, who genuinely cares for preteen daughter Betsy (Lydia Reed) and every one of his patients, making frequent house calls when not treating them right out of his own home. One destination is the laboratory of a dying research scientist who had been conducting experiments in regression, his 'control serum' successfully creating a huge supply of pills derived from vampire bats that prove to be habit forming. Beecher absent mindedly puts a bottle of the deadly pills in his suit pocket, and later when his daughter mistakes them for her father's migraine medication a fatal error takes place. Of course, the horrid side effect is that the victim yields to the addiction every evening before midnight, attacking his victims for their blood and introducing a virus that causes 'capillary disintegration' (one desiccated corpse is dug up for terrific shock effect). Coleen Gray ("The Leech Woman," "The Phantom Planet") is the pretty nurse, Kenneth Tobey the concerned local sheriff, Dabbs Greer the one doctor who tries to curb the helpless Beecher's homicidal proclivities, fully aware of what he's become but incapable of resistance (a veiled reference to drug addiction couched in acceptable horror film tropes). One may quibble that the script is lacking in detail but the actors go a long way in bringing their characters to life, a fine beginning to a quartet of Jules V. Levy and Arthur Gardner shockers that deserve to be better known than they are, all scripted by Pat Fielder - "The Monster That Challenged the World," "The Flame Barrier," and "The Return of Dracula."
Review of The Vampire
